ON the strength of a record-breaking year in one-day cricket, David Warner has been honoured as Australia’s foremost cricketer by winning the Allan Border Medal for the second consecutive year.Warner polled an overall tally of 269 votes cast across all three (Test, ODI and T20I) formats by his fellow players as well as umpires and media representatives to finish ahead of his skipper Steve Smith (248) and fast bowler Mitchell Starc (197).
Despite enduring a comparatively lean 12 months in the Test arena – Warner went almost a year without scoring a Test century and failed to reach 70 in five matches played outside Australia. – he polled heavily in the ODI format where he scored seven centuries during the voting period, spanning early January 2016 to 7 January this year, which is a new record for an Australia batter in 50-over internationals.
Eclipsing the five that Ricky Ponting scored in the 2003 calendar year, Warner was also named ODI Player-of-the-Year, as was expected, given his exploits against the white ball, although the fact that he had not previously earned that honour was as remarkable as his recent ball striking.
He becomes the fourth player to have his name engraved on the Border Medal more than once, joining four-time winners Ricky Ponting (2004-7 and 2009), and Michael Clarke (2005, 2009 and 2012-13) and Shane Watson (2010-11).
Warner was the second-highest runs-scorer across all three formats during the voting period, with 2 420 runs at 46.54 which was exceeded only by Smith’s 2 489 at 52.96 from one more international appearance.
He has now won four separate awards at the annual Allan Border presentation, held this year at Star Sydney.
In addition to Australian cricket’s top individual honour, Warner has been awarded Test Player-of-the-Year, ODI Player-of-the-Year and Bradman Young Cricketer-of-the-Year.
Perhaps surprisingly, Warner has yet to add his name to the list of winners in the T20 International game which was where he first made his name in Australia colours as a top-order thrasher in 2009.
However, he joins the select group of Matthew Hayden, Glenn McGrath, Ponting, Smith and Watson to have earned the Test and ODI Player-of-the-Year honours as well as the Border Medal.
Fast bowler Mitchell Starc was named Australia’s Test player of 2016 and all-rounder Shane Watson took the Twenty20 award in his final year of playing for his country.
Perhaps due to his lack of dominance in the Test arena during the middle of the year, it was thought that Warner might finish behind Smith in the final voting.
As he felt after winning the award for the first time last year: “I was totally surprised and shocked, I thought Steve Smith would have taken it out, he’s had a great 12 months,” Warner said when he was named the 2016 Border Medallist.
“I’m humbled and honoured to receive the award and I think it will sink in during the next week or so when I have some time to reflect on it.”